


don't you know that heaven is slow?

by oneworldaway



Category: Lost Girl
Genre: F/M, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 06:45:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1377760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneworldaway/pseuds/oneworldaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Maybe this was the universe’s way of righting things - of allowing them to be together, just as they always have been, forever.</i><br/> <br/>Because season 4 <i>demands</i> fix-it fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't you know that heaven is slow?

**Author's Note:**

> I began planning a fix-it immediately after 4.11 aired, and the finale inspired me to reshape my original idea into this. I'm probably just going to keep on writing fix-its as they each get jossed. I've decided that canon is no longer the boss of me.
> 
> Title taken from "No Resurrection" by AFI, which is about twenty times more painful to listen to after watching this whole storyline unfold. (Fun fact: my working title was "Valhalladay," because they are totally just on holiday in Valhalla right now. And, you know, you come home at the end of a holiday. We're waiting, guys.)
> 
> Beta'd by my beautiful tropical fish [Emily](http://archiveofourown.org/users/freyafrida/pseuds/freyafrida).

The first thing she’s aware of is a soft, pulsing light all around her, even though she can’t see a thing. She can feel it surrounding her, carrying her to nowhere. For a while, she tries to refocus her eyes, to turn the swirling lights into any sort of shape, before she sees her lids are shut tight. Hours seem to pass before she remembers how to open them. Then it’s the rest of her body that gives her pause; she can’t move.

Eventually she makes out the starlit sky above her, not sure why that surprises her. Should there not be a sky here, too? Or did she think she’d be _in_ the sky now? She isn’t floating or anything, though that strange sense that she’s _drifting_ somewhere remains. But she can feel it, now, the hard earth beneath her back. Grass, she realizes. If she could move, she’d wrinkle her nose at the thought of the bugs and the grass stains. It’s damp, too. Dewy?

_Oh, great,_ thinks Kenzi. _The afterlife is going to be one big cliche. All nature and stars and stuff. Kill me now--wait, that was kind of the point._

Though she’s managed to open her eyes now, she can’t so much as wiggle a finger. Her entire existence is down to the sky above her and the grass below, and Kenzi resigns herself to that. Sure, she hoped she’d get to see him again, but she knew that’d be a long shot. If she can’t have that, then maybe she’ll get the next best thing - the chance to rest.

Because in life, life goes on, as everyone around her just kept on insisting. Every day they made her get dressed, and eat, and exist, and she hated it. She wanted to lie in bed forever, breathing in the scent of him on her sheets, cataloguing every last detail of him in her memories, so she’d never wake up one day to find he’d slipped away in the night. She wanted to sleep next to his ghost. She wanted to cry, to thrash around until she wore herself out. To lie still for days. Perhaps, in death, she’s finally been granted that much.

She stops trying to move her arms and legs, her eyes fluttering shut. On top of the grass, under the stars, Kenzi goes to sleep, only hoping she might dream of him.

~

Time and space become distant memories. In a lucid moment, Kenzi wonders if she dreamed it all - if there’s ever been anything but this.

Then it hits her like a truck. All at once, nothing is real but the way his arms felt around her, the way he smiled at 3 a.m., the way he whispered in her ear when she was too far gone to make any sense of it. The broken words would only reform themselves as she lay there afterward, tangled up in him, coming back down to Earth. _I’ve always loved you..._

She cannot go back to sleep now. Suddenly, she _must_ move, and her limbs seem to agree. She pushes herself up off the ground and finds she isn’t even stiff. As a kid, Kenzi remembers watching Casper a lot, contemplating what it must feel like to be a ghost. Mostly, she wished she could move through walls, too, as it would be useful when her stepfather was in a bad mood. It didn’t hurt that little Kenzi was real hot for Devon Sawa.

Her hands don’t appear to be translucent, and her feet remain on the ground. But it seems she may get her chance to try out that trick with the walls soon enough, as she spots the house a short distance from where she stands.

It’s a small cottage, but Kenzi’s _sure_ it couldn’t have been there before, even if she couldn’t really move her head around at the time. There was nothing around her before but stars and space. The house was new. Or maybe _she_ was. Had she been moving that whole time, after all?

She begins to run towards it, anticipation building as she gets closer and closer. And for the first time since she’s been here, daylight breaks. The stars slip away, and she’s closer, closer--

The door swings open just before she reaches it. The sun peeks out over the roof, and for a moment she blinks against the blinding light.

And then he’s there, and there are no more thoughts of walking through walls, but only of crashing into him.

~

Things Kenzi Malikov Had All Wrong About The Afterlife:

  1. Neither of them have wings. (And all their Earthly parts remain present and accounted for, luckily.)
  2. She never did have to list off all those sins at the pearly gates, seeing as she never encountered any. _What’ve I been keeping count for, then?_ she thinks.
  3. Her first dog wasn’t there waiting for her. Neither was her dad. But Hale was, so she can’t complain.
  4. She always pictured more shirtless men massaging her feet and feeding her grapes, but again, Hale. Really the only shirtless man she needs.
  5. She figured there’d be a lot more floating around and meditating, but in actuality, her death isn’t all that different from her life. They even have Netflix in Valhalla. Who knew?



In fact, she’s only ever aware of the passage of time when they finish another show. “I don’t know why we never found the time to watch that before,” she ponders at the end of another _Orange Is The New Black_. “It wasn’t even that long.” Even before dying, though, her memory played tricks on her. Didn’t they start that one while Bo was missing? Even now, trying to piece that time together makes her head spin. Hale was probably busy, anyway, getting his job on the force back and all.

They mostly watch comedies. Neither really cares _what_ they watch, as long as they’re together.

They don’t do much else now. There’s a lot of sex, eating, and Netflix. It’s like their honeymoon in Valhalla, and it never has to end.

Kenzi sees now that there was never any need to fear death.

~

The day she met Bo, Kenzi’s whole life changed. She was more than just her best friend - she was her soulmate. It was as natural and instinctual for her as what she had with Hale, but in a different way, and she needed them both. She always would.

Hale would tease her for crying over group hugs on _How I Met Your Mother_ (he pretends Barney is his favourite because of his sense of dress, but admitted to Kenzi once that he secretly prefers Ted, the hopeless romantic) if he didn’t know how much she missed her own best friend. Instead, he wraps her up in a hug of their own, happy to stay there as long as she needs. They may have spoken too quickly before, but now they really do have all the time in the world.

Then she kisses him into oblivion so he _knows_ how happy she is to be with him, how much she doesn’t regret it. Because he’s her soulmate, too.

~

There aren’t really days and nights, here, and they don’t seem to have any need to sleep, but sometimes they drift off in each other’s arms, once they’ve thoroughly worn each other out. Sometimes they lie awake for ages, mapping out each other’s bodies and kissing every inch of skin they can reach. When they sleep, they never dream.

Until one night. She falls asleep slowly, the way she always does with Hale, feeling safer than ever beside him. And then she’s opening her eyes, and it’s far too bright, and this isn’t their bed...where is she?

She’s standing somewhere grassy again, but their house is nowhere to be seen. Only stone...grass, and stone, and too much sun...

And Bo.

Kenzi cries out to her, but she doesn’t turn around. As Kenzi approaches, she can see that the name on the tombstone is her own. “Bo...”

“I miss you,” says Bo, and the dead leaves don’t even crunch beneath her as Kenzi falls to her knees.

“Bo.”

“More than that, I need you. I need your courage.”

“It’s okay,” Kenzi murmurs, unheard. “I’m okay. It’s okay.”

“But I am done crying. I am done being scared. No one else will die on my watch.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “But it’s okay now.”

“Whatever it takes, I will get you back.”

Kenzi goes still.

The wind could blow right through her, and she wouldn’t even notice.

The scene begins to melt away.

“They want me to be afraid?”

She feels herself being pulled away, but the force of it is nothing compared to the sucker punch of Bo’s words.

When Kenzi wakes up screaming, Hale is right there with her, tugging her closer, holding her to his chest and rubbing her back soothingly. “I’m okay,” Kenzi breathes, over and over - for Hale’s benefit, or to convince herself, she isn’t quite sure.

_It’s_ them _who should be afraid of_ me.

But somehow, it’s Kenzi who’s terrified.

~

She should have known that Bo wouldn’t just take this lying down. And while she’s sure Bo would’ve marched right into Valhalla with her had she known a way when Hale first arrived, she has no doubt that Bo is doing everything in her power to _find_ a way now that it’s Kenzi. And of course that makes her angry. _What’s the point in saving me when you wouldn’t save him?_

The only person she’s ever missed more than she misses Bo now is Hale, and she could never leave him again. She came here for a reason, to save Bo, to save the world. Only Bo’s heart could close the gate. Her destiny has been fulfilled. Her only destiny now is to be here, with him.

Wide awake in his arms as he breathes softly next to her, she thinks that maybe Bo could bring them both home. Maybe they could all find a way. But the sinking feeling in her stomach tells her that was never part of the plan. She got him killed, and he was doomed to wait here for her, however long it might take her to catch up. It just so happened that she didn’t keep him waiting all that long. After all that, she could hardly just go back to living her life without him.

Carefully, Kenzi slips out of bed, pulls on one of Hale’s t-shirts, and tiptoes into the bathroom. Splashing some water over her face, she calms herself with thoughts of all the people they’ve known no one fought to bring back. Wouldn’t Dyson have come for Ciara, or Trick for his wife? No, fae lived and died like everybody else. At least Bo had the decency not to try to resurrect her right there on the battlefield, the way she had with Dyson at her dawning. There was probably enough chi around, but Bo must’ve known better. Bo let Kenzi go, and now she had Hale again. Maybe things _did_ happen for a reason. And if Bo didn’t know that yet, she’d figure it out. She wouldn’t take away Kenzi’s happy ending.

When Kenzi looks up, she sees Hale standing behind her in the mirror. He’s more beautiful to her in this moment than anything she’s ever seen before. A smile spreads across her face as she turns around, cocking an eyebrow at him.

“Toothpaste?” she inquires with a smirk.

~

She does her best not to sleep at first, no matter how comforted and safe she feels lying beside Hale. She stays up all night - or however long it takes for the sun to rise here - over and over, watching him sleep. Each time his chest rises and falls, she feels reborn; they’ve come back to life here, together, and she can’t help but think it’s more than she’s ever deserved. But Kenzi has been given a gift, and she’ll spend the rest of eternity in gratitude.

Sometimes they spend weeks, years, lifetimes in bed, after staying up for centuries. Eventually, she forgets to be bothered by one dream. She rolls onto her stomach, flinging an arm over his chest, and drifts off to the sound of his heartbeat. It’s a blissful, dreamless sleep - until it isn’t.

Bo is sitting on her bed, hugging a pillow; Kenzi stands still in the shadows. It takes her a moment to realize that it isn’t actually Bo’s bed, but her own. Bo is sitting in Kenzi’s room.

“It’s getting harder,” says Bo, and Kenzi knows that she’s speaking to her - only, she doesn’t know Kenzi can hear.

“That’s what she said,” Kenzi mutters.

“They all keep looking at me like they feel sorry for me. They think I’m in denial. This is not denial. You know, how could they doubt for even a second that I’m going to get you back? I am not in mourning because you won’t be gone for long. I’m bringing you home, Kenz.

“But first, I need to tell you that I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for all the times lately that I haven’t put you first. You’ve got to know, Kenz, you’re more important to me than anything. I can’t imagine my world without you, and I won’t.

“I’m sorry that I left you alone, and I’m sorry that I shut you out. I’m sorry that the fae and their shit keep trying to mess up our lives. I’d ditch them all for you, Kenz. I will, if that’s what it takes. I’ll do anything.”

Kenzi is silent when she wakes up this time. The only sound in all the heavens is Hale’s heartbeat. Squeezing her eyes shut, she listens.

~

Kenzi sits on a bar stool by the kitchen, watching Hale make them sandwiches. He pauses when he catches her staring, a funny sort of unsettled look on her face.

“You’re not gonna go _poof_ if I blink, are you?” she asks him quietly.

Hale just leans over the counter to cup her chin in his hand and kiss her. The warmth that instantly envelops her sets her at ease.

~

This time, Bo’s on the living room couch. The TV is blaring, which strikes Kenzi as unusual. Bo doesn’t watch a whole lot of TV, unless she and Kenzi are having a night in. It’s one of those trashy daytime talk shows that Kenzi gets really into sometimes... _oh_.

Bo hits the mute button just as the man on TV, who is _not_ his ex-girlfriend’s baby daddy, jumps out of his seat to do his happy dance. At this point, it was customary for Kenzi to get up and dance along, and Bo, who never cared much for these shows, suddenly misses it. In spite of her best efforts to hold onto her, she can feel Kenzi’s energy slipping away. Their house has grown too still, too quiet.

“Do you remember when we got the TV hooked up?” she asks, staring blindly at the TV, carefully avoiding looking at the empty spot beside her. “You immediately plunked yourself down on this couch and found _Airplane!_ on TV. You were appalled that I’d never seen it before. I was all ready to go to the Dal, but you insisted I sit down with you and watch it. You promised to give me a full cinematic education, and you did. Except we never got around to _Spaceballs_ , and you were adamant that I still needed to see that. So I guess my education isn’t complete yet.”

She turns off the TV. “When you get back, let’s watch it.”

Kenzi remembers the day they got their TV, too, and she remembers all her favourite movies that she made Bo watch with her. She remembers which movies Bo loved, and which ones she couldn’t even sit through without alcohol. She remembers which brand of microwave popcorn was Bo’s favourite, and roughly how much of it she would eat. (Much of what Kenzi respectfully considered Bo’s portion during a movie was usually left for her to finish at the end of the night, and she obliged.) Kenzi remembers all the laughter, all the tears, and all the times they ranted late into the night over bad remakes and unrealistic portrayals of fae species. Before they met, Kenzi never could’ve imagined having the chance to make so many happy memories.

Now, she wonders if those memories will ever be enough for Bo.

~

In the beginning, Hale was a constant presence, and they fell into stride next to each other in spite of themselves. Hale was a cop, meaning Kenzi held a long-standing distrust for his kind; and he was fae, which made the feeling, theoretically, all the more mutual. Hale was an authority figure who came from a life of privilege, no less, and Kenzi was a tiny, human criminal. For a few weeks there, early on, Kenzi half-expected him to materialize on their doorstep and attempt to arrest her for some petty old charge just to keep her away from the new golden child of the fae. ( _Attempt_ , because it’s not like she would’ve just gone without a fight - and it’s not like Bo would’ve just let him take her.

Bo would never let her go without a fight, either.)

Instead, Hale had offered her advice, real advice, albeit cloaked beneath layers of player hating. He’d teased her, but always good-naturedly. He wore the same smirk with her that appeared on his face when he’d beat Dyson at some nonsensical fae card game, or when a cute girl at the Dal would shoot him down as smoothly as he’d tried to pick her up. The way he played off of Kenzi felt like he saw her as an equal, and Kenzi had never gotten that from anyone in a position of power before, let alone someone as powerful as a siren. Eventually, she figured out that he didn’t give a shit about fae politics. Hale was chill, and he and Kenzi found themselves to be on the same wavelength more often than not. So by the time they figured out that they’d been relegated to the status of sidekicks, they didn’t really mind being left behind together all that much.

Usually, they’d watch movies at full volume, hoping to drown out the goings on upstairs. Some nights they’d give up on that, seeing it was futile, and they’d just talk. Kenzi got to know Hale better than she’d known anyone in years, save for Bo, while their best friends boinked each other’s brains out upstairs. It became a strangely comfortable routine. So comfortable, in fact, that when the boinking stopped, and Dyson was no longer at the clubhouse all the time, Hale remained. He’d follow them home at the end of a day spent chasing deviant fae together, and Kenzi would crack open a bottle whether Bo felt like staying up or not. Hale would hang out with her even if he had to work the next morning. Hale was always there.

Things are much the same now, only there are no long days on the case, and Bo is never upstairs running a bath or turning in early. Still, Kenzi feels like she’s drowning her out sometimes, as she pours herself another glass of wine and turns up the music she and Hale have been dancing to. Even when she’s wide awake, Bo’s words bounce around in her brain. _When you get back. Whatever it takes. I’ll do anything._

So Kenzi plays the music louder and pretends they’re back in their early days, that Bo’s right upstairs and she’ll still be there in the morning light, rolling her eyes and passing Kenzi the cereal, and in the meantime, it’s up to her and Hale not to let their friends have _all_ the fun. Except it’s a little bit different now, the drinking and dancing eventually leading to other activities. Kenzi wonders if the rest of Valhalla has to drown _them_ out, now.

~

“Pancakes!” says Bo, skipping into the kitchen and pulling out the frying pan. Dusting it off with a dish towel, she glimpses the long scratch on its underside from when a drunken Kenzi had decided to use it as a shield in an impromptu sword fight with Vex - a vaguely terrifying scene to walk in on at the time, but now the memory brings a smile to Bo’s face. “You’d _definitely_ demand pancakes on a morning like this.”

From her perch in the corner (or in heaven, or wherever), Kenzi observes the rays of sunlight peeking in through the windows, and figures it’s probably a Sunday. She _did_ always like to step up their breakfast game on a lazy Sunday morning, and when Bo hadn’t stayed up too late the night before satisfying her own kinds of hunger, she could be persuaded to spoil her bestie. (When Bo was the one to sleep in, Kenzi would make french toast; let it never be said that Kenzi doesn’t do her part.)

“My dad taught me how to make these,” says Bo, once she’s mixed the batter and poured some into the pan. “It was usually my mom who taught me cooking and baking, but dad loved to make pancakes. I’d help him make them before church every Sunday morning.”

“You never told me that,” says Kenzi, frowning.

“I guess it’s still kind of a habit,” Bo continues. She seems to stare off into space for a bit before she flips the pancake. “I know I don’t like to talk about the past much, but I know that you know why. It’s too hard to think about who I used to be - and who I might’ve been. I thought I’d go to college, and marry Kyle, and life would just...fall into place.”

She pokes at the pancake with her spatula. “But the truth is, I don’t have any regrets anymore. I lost ten years of my life to fear, and anger, hating myself. But all that, the path I chose...it brought me here. To the people I love. It made me Bo. I couldn’t imagine being Beth again.”

Kenzi sits and watches for a long time. She doesn’t notice she’s crying until Bo’s plate is in the sink already.

She misses sharing everything with Bo. Mornings and pancakes, lost years and the family they found in each other. She misses these conversations being two-sided. She misses Bo.

_Open your eyes, you idiot,_ whispers a voice in the back of her mind. _Wake up. You’re with Hale again. None of this is real._

Except it is, quite undoubtedly. Kenzi is confident that these moments aren’t dreams, but a window into the land of the living, into Bo’s life. When she sleeps, Bo speaks to her.

_Unless you’re a ghost right now, and this is all that’s real,_ says the voice, and Kenzi covers her ears and begins to shout even though it’s coming from inside of her, blocking out what it has to say.

Her time with Hale is not the dream. Hale is real.

When she wakes up, she drags Hale out of bed to make pancakes with her. She’s not sure if there are Sundays in Valhalla, but they can always start the tradition themselves.

~

It occurs to Kenzi that everything might’ve worked out for the best. Hale was always supposed to outlive her, anyway, unless they found some way to prolong her life. Maybe this was the universe’s way of righting things - of allowing them to be together, just as they always have been, forever.

_See, Bo?_ thinks Kenzi as the end credits roll on the movie she and Hale have been watching. _I’m totes okay here. We don’t have to pay for booze or Netflix anymore. We have each other. Everything is the way it was meant to be._

~

She shudders as he traces indecipherable patterns up and down her spine. In his arms, she’s found salvation. Over and over, they reach heaven together.

Kenzi’s entire consciousness has come down to Hale’s hands, Hale’s lips, Hale’s teeth. Night after night, she comes undone beneath him, and he pieces her back together again. As he mouths along her hip bones, Kenzi shuts her eyes in silent reverence, unable to do anything but breathe. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she whispers to the universe. “Love you, love you...” to Hale.

The world begins to quake beneath her. Her breathing quickens, and her thoughts lose coherency. There is nothing but the two of them, the heat of his touch burning through both their lifetimes, eating all her memories. Without this, she doesn’t exist.

“D-don’t go,” she stammers out, her body almost vibrating. “Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go...”

And Hale stays put, not resting until Kenzi’s forgotten her own name.

~

She’d be lying if she said she hasn’t wondered if this is all real - if Hale is really here. He _feels_ as real as anything, _more_ real than anything. If he’s just an illusion, it’s an incredibly accurate one, right down to the scar below his knuckle on his right hand from the fae bar fight he broke up his first week as a cop, and the subtle difference between his usual shit-eating grin and the one that meant he was planning on having her for dessert. If anything, he’s been a bit quiet - especially for someone with a superpowered voice - but why should that mean anything? If he’s just an illusion, then he has her fooled, and ignorance is bliss as far as Kenzi is concerned.

_If this is all just a dream,_ Kenzi prays, _don’t you dare wake me up._

~

When Kenzi finally opens the footlocker in their bathroom, she finds it empty.

~

Bo is lying flat on her back in the dark of her bedroom, staring up at the ceiling. Kenzi finds herself sitting next to her in bed. She reaches out to stroke Bo’s hair, and Bo closes her eyes.

“I know...” says Bo, and for a second, Kenzi thinks she can feel her there.

“...that he might be there with you,” Bo finishes, and it wasn’t what Kenzi was expecting at all, somehow.

“I know that by bringing you back, I might just be taking you away from him.”

She rolls onto her side, her back to Kenzi now. “But you have to understand why I’m doing this. In my heart, I _know_ it wasn’t your time.”

Kenzi resigns herself to her fate. _So this is what the end of the world feels like,_ she thinks. The feeling of the sky falling down on top of you. The inevitability of it all. The futility of everything you try to do to stop it.

“But I’ve been thinking,” says Bo. “What if it wasn’t his time, either?”

~

There’s a knock at the door.

_Inevitability._

But once she’s opened the door, Kenzi throws her arms around Bo before she can even react.

“I missed you,” Kenzi whispers, and Bo returns the hug just as fiercely.

Bo pulls back, wiping away her tears in vain as even more fall.

“I missed you so much,” she says. “We don’t have much time, though. We have to go.”

Kenzi feels her legs threatening to give out. “Bo...I don’t think I can leave him.”

“What?” asks Bo. “No one’s leaving anyone. We’re going home, _all_ of us. But our way back won’t stay open for long.”

Kenzi swallows thickly. “For real?”

“Go get Hale.”

~

Kenzi lands on the cold, damp ground with a _thud_. The laws of gravity already feel more certain than they have in some time. She’s lying in the grass again, but this time, Kenzi knows this isn’t heaven. She’s back on Earth.

“Kenzi?!” shouts Bo from a ways away. She can hardly see a thing in the darkness, but a moment later, she hears Bo’s frantic footfalls coming towards her.

“Kenz?”

“I’m here,” she says dumbly, as Bo grabs her by the shoulders, helping her to sit up. “Hale?”

Their heads whip around, and as Kenzi’s eyes begin to adjust, she can see, now, that they’re in the cemetery - and Hale is only lying a short distance away from them.

She scrambles over to him, crying out his name. But dropping to her knees next to him, she freezes, too scared to even touch him. (Too scared to find her hands covered in his blood again.)

“Hale?” she croaks out, her voice barely audible.

The whole world seems to go silent and still. The moment stretches into agonizing eternity, and Kenzi’s eyes fall shut. It’s all she can do to hold herself up.

Until she feels that familiar hand cupping her face, and every bit of tension melts out of her body in an instant. Her hands find his face, and she runs her fingers over his lips, suddenly needing to hear his voice more than she needs oxygen.

Hale smiles.

“Let’s go home, lil mama.”


End file.
